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On a clear day, Jim Cox can see the North Shore mountains, Fraser River and Green Timbers Urban Forest from his office on the 18th floor of Surrey’s Central City tower.

But just as impressive to Cox, head of the city’s development arm, Surrey City Development Corp., is the civic plaza taking shape below him.

Only a handful of towers scrape the sky now. The plaza is flanked by the Central City shopping centre, Surrey’s Simon Fraser University campus, the new glass-fronted civic library, and the half-built six-storey city hall.

City and business officials expect at least 10 more towers to be added in the next decade, along with a five-star hotel and performing arts centre, as developers flock to transform that area of Whalley into a dense, urban downtown core second in Metro only to Vancouver’s.

“The build-out is going to be tremendous,” said Elizabeth Model, executive director of the Surrey Downtown Business Improvement Association. “It will be a completely different City Centre than what we’re looking at now. It’s going to be a combination of Yaletown meets Metrotown.”

By 2031, 65,000 people are expected to live in Surrey’s downtown core — more than twice the 28,000 there now — as it transforms into a vibrant, walkable town centre. Some 39,000 will also work there, up from 17,500 now.

“As we transform though, older buildings will come down and highrises built,” Model said. “In the next 20 years, it will look more like downtown Vancouver.”

The 581-hectare downtown centre, served by four SkyTrain stations, calls for a mix of residential and commercial towers. A large outdoor plaza, big enough to hold thousands of people, will serve as a gathering place for civic celebrations, farmers’ markets and other outdoor activities, while the area is close to Green Timbers Urban Forest and Holland Park.

A new outpatient centre at Surrey Memorial Hospital, the relocation of the RCMP’s E-division headquarters from Vancouver to a new complex in Surrey and corporations like Coast Capital Savings are seen as huge economic generators for the city’s new financial heart.

But there are hiccups to the plan, with some landowners holding out or struggling to sell key properties integral to the area’s development.

The former Stardust roller rink, closed seven years ago and leased out for ball and roller hockey and soccer, has been for sale for a year and a half, but has yet to find a buyer. The 300,000-square-foot site, kitty-corner to the SFU campus, anchors a strip of small businesses and South Asian restaurants that run parallel to tracks from the Surrey Central SkyTrain station.

Cox maintains that as those properties are all occupied, with tenants paying rent, there’s no pressure for them to develop immediately.

“They (owners) want to get fair value for their land,” he said. “The market conditions have to be right.”

David Goodman, principal of HQ Commercial Realty, who is handling the Stardust sale, agrees. He said the Stardust property has attracted the interest of two or three potential buyers, but any development on that site will cost at least $100 million and “it’s going to take a creative approach to come up with the right improvements.

“It’s also a question of what the market can absorb,” he said. “We consider our site on the 50-yard line, we are absolutely centre ice.”

In some ways, the Stardust site is a throwback to the old Surrey; its heyday rooted in the 1970s when Surrey was a rural bedroom community. When it first opened, the roller rink was the place to be, said former manager Bonnie Burnside, because there was nothing else around. And when the facility closed in 2005, many turned out to say goodbye, reminiscing about first dates, birthday parties and all-night roll-a-thons.

But times have changed.

“Every second person says that’s where I had my first date,” Goodman said. “Understandably there’s so much going on in that area ... there’s no doubt the City Centre is well on it way to becoming a key area in the Lower Mainland. Surrey has shown a lot of vision in developing that area and it’s now coming of age.”

King George Group is proposing a new 46-storey tower in the City Centre, rising nearly 75 feet higher than the Central City tower, while Century Holdings plans to build a 50-storey tower and five-star hotel next to the new city hall.

Bosa Properties has amassed enough property to add six more towers, Cox said, while Weststone Ultra and Rise Alliance could each potentially build two or three more.

City officials say north Surrey is already a culturally vibrant community, playing host to Winterfest and the Fusion Festival. It is also home to the Surrey Arts Centre, a hub of local arts and cultural activity.

Cox maintains that as the area grows, its “reputation is going to evolve.”

But officials acknowledge more work needs to be done, especially in terms of connecting the area with the City Centre to Surrey other five town centres — Newton, Fleetwood, Guildford, South Surrey and Cloverdale — and providing amenities such as high-end restaurants and entertainment.

“Transit is also hugely important in terms of where people want to live,” Cox said. “It’s easy to get to Vancouver from here. But it’s hard to get here from others parts of Surrey. We see this as the city for South of the Fraser so we need good access to it.”

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts is pushing for rapid transit and bus routes fanning out from the downtown core. Her biggest push is for light rail along 104th Avenue between Guildford and City Centre; along King George Highway from Whalley/City Centre to Newton (and eventually on to South Surrey); and along Fraser Highway from the City Centre through Fleetwood and on to Langley.

“It’s about building the metropolitan core in the downtown but ensure we have linkages to each of the town centres,” Watts said. “They need to be connected.”

Century Holdings’s Sean Hodgins said he decided to invest in the City Centre — and plans to move the company headquarters there from Tsawwassen — because of its location as the centre of the Lower Mainland.

Many of his employees live around the region, he said, including in Vancouver and on the North Shore and Surrey is more central than Delta.

“It’s not just that we’re doing business in Surrey but as a company in business, Surrey just makes a lot of sense,” he said.

Hodgins noted Surrey Memorial, which is slated to become B.C.’s second-largest hospital, and the new RCMP precinct will drive demand for a five-star hotel, while the city is drawing in more investments by providing the infrastructure to support the growth.

The Expo line’s extension into Surrey, opened 24 years ago, failed to fully urbanize Surrey, but the city has now “discovered the gem they’ve got,” as Hodgins put it.

“What excites me about it is a lot of time you see growth in an area and the city comes in afterward and tries to build in public infrastructure,” Hodgins said. “Surrey has come in with investment in the city hall, parks and recreation and libraries, and has led with public funds instead of following. I see it as partnership, a collaboration.”

Lindsay Meredith, a marketing professor at Simon Fraser University, agreed that Surrey is becoming a “prime location” for residents and businesses.

The City Centre has become the impetus for Surrey development, he said, and credits Watts for appealing to developers and residents, by following through on plans to transform Whalley by doing simple things like putting cops on bicycles and building playgrounds.

“They created a brand new City Centre. When you stack highrises around a university you change your image quite a lot,” Meredith said.

Model maintains she has already seen a rise in the number business people around the City Centre compared with four years ago. But it’s not just business people and condo-dwellers that Surrey wants to attract in the City Centre.

Jean Lamontagne, Surrey’s general manager of planning, maintains the city wants to ensure the downtown core remains affordable for families, with a mix of housing types, including single-family homes, on the perimeter of the downtown core.

“There’s some interest from families with large numbers of kids to be close to the City Centre,” he said. “Not everybody wants to be on the 32nd floor of a building.”

Bill Rempel, vice-president and general manager of Central City, moved to a Concord Pacific tower in Surrey from Vancouver two years ago after taking the job at the shopping centre. The move made sense: Rempel can now walk to work, while his wife takes transit, and the two are just a 20-minute drive from the stable where they board their horses.

And when he’s not riding a horse, Rempel said he’s walking in Holland or Green Timbers Park or at Serpentine Fen. “There’s so much here that fits our lifestyle; it’s great to have a lower environmental impact and walk to work,” said Rempel, who is also president of the downtown Business Improvement Association.

“Even in the three years, I’ve been at Central City, we’re already seeing substantial improvements and new tenants and offices and jobs in the downtown core. With that will come new amenities and new restaurants.

“The City Centre is emerging, but it’s not a matter of it will happen but when. Surrey and South of the Fraser is a force to be reckoned with.”

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The new Surrey: City centre reaches for the sky

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